Legend of Fu Yao

Meng Fuyao’s palm blocked the sword’s blade firmly.

Fresh blood dripped steadily from her hand, following the blade as it flowed onto the wound on Zhangsun Wuji’s back. Their blood was mixed together as it fell onto the deep purple leaves covering the earth.

Meng Fuyao’s expression remained unchanged as she wrapped her fingers around the tip of the sword, intending to snap the blade. However, the sword seemed to be made of an extremely slippery material and Meng Fuyao’s hand slipped, resulting in another flesh-splitting wound.

She roared in anguish and lunged forward, wanting to hit the sword with her own shoulder and push the blade out of Zhangsun Wuji’s back.

However, Zhangsun Wuji suddenly reached out and pulled her behind him, making the longsword embedded in his back sink even deeper as fresh blood spurted out, dyeing his lavender robes a deep purple. Tai Yan’s hand trembled as a look of panic flashed on her face, but Zhangsun Wuji had already grabbed his sleeve.

Upon grabbing his sleeve, his robes instantly hardened and lashed out heavily onto the blade of the sword, causing strange shockwaves. Tai Yan’s hand slackened, and she involuntarily let go of the sword. Immediately, Zhangsun Wuji turned and pulled out the longsword, and with a wave of his hand, the sword shone brightly as though it were lightning and, not targeting her, flew towards a nearby pond.

Tai Yan flipped in the air, rushing to retrieve the sword bestowed to her by her master. The sword had hit against a rock by the pond and rebounded, suddenly shooting towards her with greater speed. Tai Yan hastily evaded it and reached out to grab the sword when suddenly, her body stopped moving.

Zhangsun Wuji’s finger had already tapped between her eyebrows.

His hand was stained with blood, and he left a deep red fingerprint between her eyebrows, making Tai Yan’s plump and flushed face look like Sudhana, the kind child God. However, her expression was anything but kind, frightening even, as she glared at the finger in shock, screeching, “You dare to use the forbidden technique on me—”

“You’ve forgotten again, apart from shutting one’s memories, the Heaven Reversal Point can also leave a permanent mark.” Zhangsun Wuji stared at her dispassionately, his expression calm as he watched Tai Yan’s face instantly turn ashen. He flicked a finger against her and said, “I think this is the most fitting punishment for you!”

Tai Yan tumbled backward onto the fallen bamboo leaves as she frantically rubbed at the mark on her forehead to no avail. The brilliant red mark remained fresh on her forehead, looking extremely comical.

Tai Yan’s face paled, and tears sprung to her eyes as she stamped her foot, turned around and left angrily. Meng Fuyao couldn’t care less about her and rushed forward like the wind, holding onto Zhangsun Wuji and feeling his body in a blind panic. “How are you, how are you…”

She felt Zhangsun Wuji’s back, her hands stained red with blood, shocking her to the point where her voice changed as she tore at her own clothes with trembling hands to tie up his wounds. However, her hand trembled too greatly and no matter how hard she tugged, she couldn’t tear the fabric. Feeling Zhangsun Wuji’s body slacken slightly, she hurriedly settled him down and tore at her clothes again, but Zhangsun Wuji suddenly reached out a hand and stopped her.

His palm was slightly cold and damp with blood, yet it carried the same gentleness as it pulled Meng Fuyao’s trembling hand away from her clothes and caressed her face, bringing tears to her eyes as it dripped on his hand, mixing with the blood. Meng Fuyao stared dumbly at his fingers and touched her eyes only to realize that her face was already filled with tears.

This knowledge made her heart ache—it turned out that one’s feelings would betray one’s willpower. No matter how much she fought against it, she would still cry when it was supposed to hurt. She stared at her own tears numbly, and even more tears gushed out as she sobbed openly and loudly onto Zhangsun Wuji’s chest.

“It’s my fault, it’s my fault… I don’t know what came over me… I suddenly went overboard and said those nasty things… It was my fault… Hit me, hit me, hit me…”

As she sobbed, she pressed a hand against the wound, searching desperately for the Ajuga grass medicine in her and Zhangsun Wuji’s robes before stuffing those precious pills into Zhangsun Wuji’s mouth. The wound against her palm felt as though it was stabbing her heart to the point where she was filled with scars, and those scars suddenly began to bleed as it enveloped her heart, causing her heart to beat even faster and tumultuously until she almost couldn’t tell where her heart was.

Yet, Zhangsun Wuji chuckled lightly as he lay in her embrace, bringing his tear-soaked finger to his lip as though he were tasting the saltiness of her tears. He reached out again and stroked her hair, closing his eyes wearily as he said, “Let me sleep for a while…”

True to his word, he fell into a peaceful sleep, and Meng Fuyao gazed intently at his pallid face and the long lashes on his closed eyelids. Suddenly, her heart felt as though it were hit by a war carriage. ‘He, he, he, he wouldn’t have died, right?’

With trembling fingers, she reached for Zhangsun Wuji’s pulse and actually couldn’t locate it several times before finally feeling it. She silently spat out the breath she had been holding and suddenly felt at a loss, unsure what she should do.

Several guards rushed over and tried to carry Zhangsun Wuji, but by then she had recovered her wits and pushed them away, saying, “Let me do it.”

‘It’s my fault, let me do it.’

Zhangsun Wuji and Meng Fuyao had entered the cold war period.

Actually, to describe it in that way was not very accurate; more accurately, Meng Fuyao no longer had the face to see Zhangsun Wuji, so the two of them stopped meeting each other.

Every day, she lay on the roof drinking her sorrows away, singing nonsensical songs to the moon and falling asleep after getting drunk, tumbling down from the roof in the middle of the night and kicking off several tiles—Zhangsun Wuji was still recovering from his wounds and since his injuries were severe, Zong Yue and Yun Hen were busy tending to him and couldn’t care less about her. Even Zhangsun Wuji’s beloved pet moved around with its eyes stuck on its forehead, simply ignoring her existence.

Meng Fuyao continued to drink every day as she allowed her drunken thoughts to roam freely. The more she thought, the more she felt that there was something off about the events of the day, that there was something off about the sudden bout of viciousness from herself; it was definitely not something she would have done in a relatively calm state of mind, unless there was a trigger, but what was the trigger? If it wasn’t something Zhangsun Wuji said, the problem lay with Tai Yan.

She reflected carefully, her suspicion on the expression Tai Yan had given her as she said her final words to her; she had felt that the expression was off, and now as she thought about it, it still felt off. Didn’t the kind of martial arts that Zhangsun Wuji practiced have some kind of hypnosis technique? Had Tai Yan hypnotized her back then?

That was why she had stopped halfway and did not make a move, it was because she had controlled a part of her mind and relaxed her wariness, and then using her to attack Zhangsun Wuji before sneaking an attack—she should have thought of it; a master who could train someone like Zhangsun Wuji, why wouldn’t Tai Yan have any malicious intent? It was due to her own stupidity, assuming that a lack of battle experience meant a lack of wisdom. She was such an incorrigible pig!

After thinking through everything, Meng Little Pig felt that there was nothing that could be repaired. How could she repay the hole in Zhangsun Wuji’s back? She caused him to get hurt… She caused him to get hurt… The more she thought about it, the more she wanted to just end herself; was the meaning of her existence to hurt him in both body and heart?

Meng Fuyao stared at the moon sorrowfully, once again raising her cup lazily and toasting, “Chang Er, you damned girl, who asked to run? To run to the moon? To cross through time and space? Now you can’t come back, can’t you? You can’t go back, and you still destroyed other people’s lives, from a general to a monk, don’t you have any sense of guilt?”

“What are you talking about?” Someone had sat down beside her and snatched her wine jar away, taking a swig as she laughed. “All the wine at home has been drunk by you, now I don’t have any left to drink.”

“Home?” Meng Fuyao’s eyes were expressionless as she slurred, “I don’t have a home.”

“Meng Fuyao, home is where the heart is.” Ya Lanzhu turned around, her eyes gleaming brightly in the darkness as she continued, “You home is right here.”

“Ha—” Meng Fuyao snorted drily.

“Even if you refuse to admit it,” Ya Lanzhu shook her head exasperatedly, “Who was the one who carried a bloodied up Zhangsun Wuji and stumbled into the house, looking like a ghost, shouting for Zong Yue until her voice was hoarse, scaring the wits out of me thinking that you’d both committed suicide. Meng Fuyao, I should have drawn how you looked like then, see if you can continue to be stubborn after that.”

Meng Fuyao remained silent, and after a long moment, she grasped a handful of her unruly hair.

“Damnit are you looking for a fight—”

“Looking for a fight your head.” Ya Lanzhu tapped her head with the wine jar and said, “Do you remember what you said to me previously, live in the moment? Live in the moment!”

“After hurting someone, I can never live in the moment but only live in the past—” Meng Fuyao wailed.

Ya Lanzhu couldn’t stand it any longer and stood up. With one foot, she kicked a hole in the roof and then, she proceeded to kick Meng Fuyao.

There was a bout of thunderous sounds accompanied by loud cursing before suddenly becoming quiet as though the mouth that was cursing had suddenly been blocked.

Ya Lanzhu squatted down and peered through the hole as she shouted unapologetically, “Zhangsun Wuji you didn’t get hurt, did you? I’ve handed the person in denial who’s been drinking on your roof to you, receive her well…”

Meng Fuyao rolled down.

Ya Lanzhu’s kick was sudden and vicious, and given her drunkenness, she fell down in the ugliest manner with her arms and legs flailing.

Fortunately, in her drunken stupor, she still remembered that the one below was Zhangsun Wuji and that he was injured, and so did not fall on him.

Halfway in the air, she flipped, stepping onto a stool before leaping back up. It was probably better that she slept on the roof, she hadn’t thought of how to face Zhangsun Wuji yet.

However, the stool suddenly broke.

Meng Fuyao stepped into the air as she flipped in alarm, reaching out to grab the pillar only to have an additional white ball on the pillar.

Two round eyes stared back at her, seething with hatred as it turned back and launched at her. ‘I scratch! I scratch! I scratch! I scratch! Scratch! Scratch!”

“Bam!”

Sugar-filled claws scratched at Meng Fuyao’s face, viciously scratching at the drunken coward.